Dead Ringer: The Eddie Malloy series, #6

By joe mcnally

A trio of apparent suicides of racing people in the beautiful Lambourn valley in south west England baffles Eddie Malloy. Eddie refuses to accept the police assumption that each death, accompanied by a suicide note, suggests no crime has been committed.

One of the dead saved Eddie's life, when Eddie was just 19. Fourteen years' later, Eddie knows he cannot rest until he discovers the truth behind the death of his friend. Eddie enlists the help of a woman "with a brain the size of the moon", Maven Judge, a solitary maverick living on a remote Welsh clifftop above Hell's Mouth bay.

Eddie believes he is up against a criminal genius. But he is betting that his determination, and the intellect of Maven Judge, can unravel the strangest mystery he has faced.

• Language: English
• Publisher: joe mcnally
• Release date: Jan 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781497733183

joe mcnally

Joe McNally has been involved with horse racing all his life. As a teenager he devoured Dick Francis novels while starving himself in the hope of keeping his weight low enough to begin a career as an apprentice jockey. It soon became apparent the fasting was in vain. From those early stable-lad days, Joe stayed in touch with the sport through various jobs in the industry. In the mid 1990s he was marketing manager for the Grand National before becoming commercial director of Tote Bookmakers. A native Scot, Joe lives with his wife Margy in Rothesay on the wonderful Isle of Bute where he now writes full-time.

Book preview

1

We were turning toward the straight at Ascot for the last time. I was crouched on a veteran steeplechaser swinging my whip, talking to him, urging him on through the cold blinding rain in pursuit of three others. The ground was like pudding and the brown horse below me plodded on as he’d been doing each winter for nine years. We had no chance of winning, but he kept going. His name was Excalibur. I reckoned he had cleared more than seven hundred fences in his life.

Excalibur had long ago mastered the art of efficient jumping, spending minimum time in flight, battle-scarred belly brushing through black birch, empty scrotum ensuring painless contact, at the price of castration when still a colt, condemned by his lack of speed never to mount a mare.

On we went.

Three to jump in the gathering gloom, then a wash-down for the old gelding and a shower for me. His horsebox would carry him home to a familiar, welcoming stall. I faced an hour’s drive to an empty house, though no less comforting for that.

Weary, winnerless and wondering what to do in the two-day break before Christmas, I got into the car and took my phone from the glove-box. New rules on integrity banned jockeys from using mobile phones on racecourse premises. Some of the lads carried them anyway. I preferred to leave mine locked up. My history made it vital for me to be above suspicion. I minimized risks where I could.

Three voicemails waited. The last one was from Jimmy Sherrick. He sounded anxious. I called him.

‘Jimmy’

‘Eddie.’ He was on hands-free.

‘Any luck today?’ I asked. He’d been riding at Haydock, two hundred miles north of Ascot. ‘Waste of time, Eddie. Two rides. Two losers. You?’

‘I can beat you. Three rides, three losers. The best that can be said is that I’m going to be home a hell of a lot quicker than you are.’

‘I’ll be taking it easy. No point bursting my balls to get back. Traffic is shit as usual.’

‘You okay? Your voicemail sounded a bit edgy.’

‘Nah, things aren’t right. I wanted to talk to you.’

‘I’m about to head home. I can put this on hands-free.’

He didn’t answer. I thought we’d lost the connection. ‘Jimmy?’

‘Eddie, I’m chucking it with Bayley. I wanted you to know first, since you got me the job.’

‘What’s up?’ Jimmy had been riding for Bayley Watt for the last three seasons, and the new season wasn’t that old.

‘Ahh, things just aren’t right. I had a call last night from the Racing Post asking if I’d do one of these interviews for the Sunday edition. You know the usual crap, what’s your favourite horse and all this?’

‘An honour.’ I joked.

‘They must be well short of subjects to be phoning me. Anyway, one of the questions is How would you like to be remembered?, and that’s what decided me.’

‘What, you’d like to be remembered as a guy who packed in the best job he’s ever had?’

‘There’s jobs and jobs. You know that. Every man has his price, so they say, but look, I’ll tell you about it over a drink. All I’ll say now is that you really need to think about things if Bayley offers you anything. Come over for a bite tomorrow.’

We arranged to meet at Jimmy’s place next evening.

Jimmy was a bit like the old gelding Excalibur. He’d been around for years, plodding through his career in the lower half of the jockeys’ table. In his forties now, Jimmy was a grinder; a reliable, workaday jockey whose dreams of stardom ended as mine were beginning. One of the things that had affected his career was the time he saved my life.

He got a lot of praise for that, but a few whisperers questioned his commitment at a crucial time for him - heartless bastards.

Jimmy threw a big race to help me.

I was just nineteen and still claiming. Young professional jockeys start their career with a weight allowance which is supposed to offset their experience. The more winners they ride, the smaller the allowance they can claim until the allowance is ‘ridden out’.

I was still claiming five pounds on the day of the fall. This meant the horse I was riding didn’t have to carry the ten stone eight pounds the handicapper had allotted; my claim reduced that to ten stone three. This was in a big race at Kempton. Prize money to the winner was forty grand, which was a lot fourteen years ago.

I was a bold young buck, throwing horses at fences with a belief in my timing and talent that far outstripped caution and experience. Death seemed centuries away.

My mount was a front-runner. Some horses just like to lead, he was one. But another horse, a grey, took us on from the start that day and I stupidly pitched myself into a oh no you don’t battle right from the off.

In front of the packed grandstands, I called on my horse for a big jump, hoping to dishearten the grey. My mount did all he could but I’d asked him up way too soon and he smashed into the fence, front legs piercing the black birch two thirds of the way down, chest hitting the top of it, spine flexing as his back end tried to continue at thirty miles an hour. They told me the final somersault was spectacular; firing me out of the saddle like a missile, head first, straight into a blackout.

I was young. So were the two medics who came to help. I’d stopped breathing. They figured out I’d swallowed my tongue but my jaw had locked. They told me afterward that they’d been frantic and scared trying to get my mouth open. The man admitted to crying in fear and frustration, and the woman, his colleague, was trying to calm him as well as help me. All this while the race continued. Fourteen runners were on their way toward us and the finish. Seven tons of horseflesh travelling at thirty miles an hour.

But the fence I lay in front of, the second last in the race, had been dolled off with markers to warn the jockeys and send them round the wing. Jimmy Sherrick turned into the straight well clear on the chestnut mare whose name I can’t recall. As he galloped past the dolled-off fence he looked across and saw the medics struggling, the man crying, my face going blue. And he did something unheard of. He pulled his horse up. Jimmy sacrificed the race by stopping and turning back to jump off and land beside us. He knew what had happened and he pushed the crying medic away with such force the man rolled underneath the white rails. Then Jimmy punched me hard on the side of my jaw.

Unlocked.

The female medic reached and hooked my tongue out of my airway.

I sat up to see the horse I’d been riding cropping grass on the infield. He was okay, and so was I.

An anonymous donor sent Jimmy the money he would have earned from his percentage of the prize money. Jimmy made the international news bulletins. But at the end of the season his contract with that trainer was not renewed and Jimmy found himself drifting to the edges, freelancing, scrabbling for rides.

When I recovered, I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t do half enough to try and help Jimmy Sherrick. Oh, I thanked him, posed for pictures, bought him champagne, offered him a holiday abroad. Material stuff thrown his way by a cocky kid on the road to the top; to being Champion Jockey at the age of twenty-one. Too busy playing the big star to stop and think and help a man who loved race riding as much as I did. A man who’d wanted to succeed, as I did. A man who had not lost perspective, or his sense of humanity.

I’d lost mine.

I remember asking myself, if the positions had been reversed, would you have sacrificed that race to save Jimmy Sherrick?

No.

My arrogance and self-perceived professionalism persuaded me that I should be proud of that answer. When fate took its revenge on me by way of a frame-up in doping allegations which got me warned off, I had five years in the wilderness to reflect on what a prick I had been after Jimmy Sherrick saved my life.

When I finally regained my licence, seven years ago, Jimmy was still clinging on. He was working the fringes, riding the slow horses, the poor jumpers, the heart-breakers and soul-eaters who trailed home in the dying wake of winners, passing the post as the stands emptied, banished to a blind world where nobody watched anymore.

Older, sorrier, wiser, I had tried to do for Jimmy what I should have done all those years ago.

When I couldn’t take a ride, Jimmy was always the guy I suggested as a sub. Any owners I met, I’d talk Jimmy up. ‘There’s nobody better, believe me. Jimmy’s experience can’t be bought.’

‘He’s an old man. Past it.’

‘Don’t you believe it. He’s tough and as fit as he ever was.’

When Bayley Watt offered me the job of stable jockey, I’d persuaded him to give it to Jimmy Sherrick. OK, perhaps that was no great sacrifice. Bayley was just a permit trainer, restricted to training horses owned by himself and immediate family, but he’d had some good animals over the years. This had been his best start to a season. He had fewer than a dozen horses but he’d already won some good prizes, and looked set to break his own records.

That’s what made Jimmy’s decision so puzzling. Christmas was days away. A hell of a time to give up security and good horses.

As I passed Jimmy’s dark house on the way home, I considered calling on him later that night rather than waiting twenty four hours. I slowed and stopped close by to consider the options. He had two hundred miles to travel. I knew that once I reached home I’d be reluctant to come back out. I drove on. Tomorrow night would do. Even my curiosity could hold out that long.

I suspected Jimmy had simply had enough of Bayley Watt. The trainer could be eccentric. He’d tried a few crazy schemes to improve horses. Maybe he’d just worn Jimmy out with them. Jimmy was forty four, a man of routine. He didn’t like surprises. I smiled as I pulled into my driveway, already looking forward to Jimmy’s story.

But I never got to hear it.

When I called on Jimmy next evening, I found him hanging from a rusty chain, looped through the rafters in his cellar. A wooden chair lay on its side and his body, lit by a bare bulb, was still swinging.

2

Jimmy’s next-of-kin was his father, Jim. His first-of-kin really, I thought as I watched the old man by the graveside. Short and slight like his dead son, a thick black coat engulfed him, protecting his pallid skin from the icy wind. His boots shone black in the snow. He looked on grimly as six jockeys fed purple cords through fingers that would normally be slipping reins on this last day of December. The lads lowered Jimmy into the ice-fringed hole and let the cords drop, knots drumming on the coffin lid. Mister Sherrick had wanted Jimmy buried before the new year began.

The cold snap had wiped out racing since Boxing Day, although there was a benefit in the freeze. Empty changing rooms and deserted racetracks meant all Jimmy’s friends could be here. Most accepted Mister Sherrick’s invitation back to the hotel to celebrate Jimmy’s life. But suicide and celebration are hard things to reconcile. And jockeys anticipating a quick resumption of racing dared not delve into the buffet, so it was a subdued affair, ending with empty goodbyes and full platters.

That night, at home, I went into the garden, leaving the door wide open behind me and the TV volume on high so I could hear the bells ring the dead year out over the frosty woods. I felt the old familiar tingle of hope in this thirty-third winter of my life.

Renewal.

Since childhood the thought of new days, new months, new years, new horses, new chances, had kept me going.

Lambourn village lay a mile north across the fields. I heard faraway music and laughter, and I silently told the party goers to enjoy everything while they could.

Perversely, I sat in the sun house, an expensive wooden hexagon I’d persuaded myself I’d use in my ‘new life’. That life was supposed to have begun more than two years before when I’d found this piece of land and decided, finally, to try to put down roots.

I’d stumbled on the place by accident, out running one morning. Boredom steered me off my usual route, down a lonely road past a beautiful old Manor house then onward downhill, the tarmac giving way to a rutted track falling steeply, enticing me into a dancing hurtle as I dodged holes and jutting stones, my feet reacting almost before my brain, trying to keep me upright as adrenaline and gravity drew me down down down.

The hill gave out, though I needed a wooden gate to stop me, arms reaching for the top bars then a bump and a slump and panting laughter and relief that I hadn’t broken a leg in the mad plunging run.

And when my breathing calmed I stood upright and turned slowly, surveying this pocket of greenery in the fold of three small hills, deep woods on two sides. Something made me hold my breath…and I heard silence.

Don’t let anyone tell you that silence can’t be heard. It can. Perhaps above all else it can. Pure. Clean. Peaceful. And for the first time in my life I knew I was home.

It took eighteen months of planning, saving, borrowing, paperwork and meetings. In February the money ran out and I recalled standing again at that gate, looking at the concrete foundations, but knowing that everything was going to be all right. And my mother made it all right. She died.

My father had died the year before and I had hoped his death would free her, that the ragged ruined strands of the supposed bond between mother and child could somehow be re-tied. But his memory and her guilt had done too much damage. The dry words in her will offered the only recompense she could find: To our surviving son, Edward, we bequeath our share in Keelkerry Stud.

Surviving son. A final barb.

The other shareholder in the stud, my sister Marie, was living there. She offered to buy out my share and I told her she could have it for nothing.

‘Why?’ Marie asked, ‘You’re entitled to half the value.’

‘Because it’s blood money.’

‘Don’t be stupid, Eddie, for God’s sake! It was her way of trying to make everything right.’

‘I’ve found the place I want to live. I don’t want to build it with their money, not a brick of it.’

Marie and I had seen little of each other over the years, and we’d had a bitter fallout over her son, Kim. Last year she had spurned him for a second time, and Kim had come to live with me and Laura, the woman I’d believed was finally the woman. But faced yet again with the intimacies of life as a ‘partner’, with meeting the expectations of a loved one, the cracks in the foundations of my personality could not withstand the strain.

We broke up.

Marie, motherless and alone in that big house, suddenly decided she did want her son back in her life. So Kim, a noble boy, did the selfless thing and went to live with her. He’d never admit that he’d seen it as a duty. But we’d known, he and I. Only Marie seemed oblivious of the fact.

I saw Kim from time to time, but it was painful for us. We’d formed a strong bond, and it was he who’d consoled me with promises that one day we would all be together again. And he had cut through my cynicism. I believed him. He was thirteen, and more mature than his mother and his uncle put together.

But all of that had made me more ruthless in my desire for a fresh start, dependent on no one, determined to reject an inheritance that would have tied me forever to my father. And Marie, at least, had known me well enough to realize it wasn’t worth arguing. We agreed that she’d lend me enough to finish the bungalow.

That’s how far forward I had planned; a bungalow. No stairs. Nothing to hinder battered arthritic joints if I reached retirement age. I’d learn to relax, I told myself, do some gardening, sit in the sun house reading on summer evenings.

I’d known, of course, that the aptitude for relaxation had always eluded me. But this, this renewal, this home I had built would change things, wouldn’t it?

I smiled as I sat swilling whiskey round my glass, trying to make it reach the rim without looping out. I’d spent no more than an hour in this sun house since I’d bought it, and here I was in the freezing darkness, the snow pale on the lawn except for the yellow rectangle lit from the picture window.

Oh, yes, that window was to be another relaxation outlet; my view of nature, of wildlife. I drank and washed the whiskey round my mouth, thinking back to the spring, to my mother’s funeral. I stood at the grave, soil and turf barely settled over my father when they’d carved it open once more for his wife.

With both parents below me, I was conscious of taking a step forward in the mortality line, one rank closer to death.

3

Ilay awake in the dead silence. Since finding him hanging, I’d been unable to wipe the image, to blink it from my mind’s eye. Anytime my thoughts were unoccupied, he came back. I even had a name for him now: Swinging Jimmy.

Swinging Jimmy. It wasn’t meant to belittle him or his memory, it was just that he was with me so often, my mind had found a way of welcoming him. Not as a ghoulish suicide, but as a relaxed, peaceful, gently swinging Jimmy.

His body had been warm. I’d lifted him, half over my shoulder. Rust flakes from the chain fell into my hair.

I’d kept saying his name. He had wet himself and it seeped into my shirt. Supporting him with my right arm, I’d managed to pull my phone out with my left hand, intent on holding him up until an ambulance arrived. But there was no mobile signal in the cellar.

I had made myself count out a minute in silence, holding my breath to try and hear Jimmy’s. I clutched his wrist, seeking a pulse. Nothing.

I let him go and ran upstairs to make the call and when I returned he was swinging in a small circle. I sat in his dangling shadow cast from the cobwebbed light-bulb, and when the police arrived I turned away, not wanting to see strangers work Jimmy through the cold practicalities of release.

A uniformed policeman, Sergeant Middleton, took my statement. I told him Jimmy had asked to see me, although I didn’t know why.

‘Were you close friends?’

‘Not really. We’d known each other a long time, and I saw him two or three days a week on the racecourse, but we didn’t socialize.’

‘So you’ve no idea what he wanted to talk to you about?’

‘He told me he was packing his job in. I’d helped get him it and I think he might have wanted to explain his reasons.’

‘In what way did you help him get the job?’

I told him how Jimmy had saved my life fourteen years ago. ‘I owed him.’

He nodded, finishing his notes. He got me to check and sign them. ‘Is this a formal statement then?’

‘For now.’ I might need to ask more questions in the next few days.’

---

After New Year’s day breakfast, I looked at the satellite picture of the UK on my PC.

White.

Sixty racecourses buried under snow and frost. I should have been on the road to Cheltenham for two rides, but my workplace was snowbound. The weathermen promised no relief in the coming days.

I put on my running gear and headed into the woods, imagining myself alone on the planet, breaking new ground through the whiteness. A mercenary thought crept in. I’d probably get the rides back for Bayley Watt’s yard now that Jimmy was gone.

Bayley had offered me that position as stable jockey along with a small cash retainer. I could have used the job and the money. But balancing things on my imaginary scales, I found my wallet outweighed by my conscience.

Jimmy was clinging by his fingertips at the time. He’d split with his wife and was just trying to handle each day as it came. He’d needed the job more than I did, although he hadn’t known it was on offer.

I persuaded Bayley to take him instead of me and they’d done okay together.

I crunched on rhythmically through the snow, trying to recall what Jimmy had said about warning me to be careful if Bayley Watt made an offer. I’d wait a day or two, then ring Bayley. Or maybe a week. For decency’s sake.

4

On the afternoon of January 3rd, my phone lit up with an unknown number. It was Jimmy Sherrick’s father. He sounded surprisingly strong, given how frail he’d looked at the funeral. ‘Eddie, I got your number from Jimmy’s diary. I’m at his house trying to sort out his stuff. He left a letter for you.’

‘Oh.’ I searched for something to say.

He said, ‘Do you want me to drop it in? You’re not far away, are you?’

‘I’m not, no. Ten minutes. But I can come to you. You’ll have enough to do.’

‘I’d… I’d rather be on my own here until this is done, if you know what I mean. No offence. It’s a bit…hard.’

‘Sure. Fine. I understand. Do you want to ring when you’re leaving and I’ll give you directions?’

Mister Sherrick arrived as dusk fell. His hand was cold, the skin loose and thin. ‘Come in. The kettle is on, or I can offer you something stronger.’

He wiped snow from his shiny black boots. ‘Tea would be fine. Heat me up. You’re well tucked away down here, eh?’

We settled at the kitchen table, the room warmed by the stove and the bright lights. Mister Sherrick kept his jacket on. He wore a brown suit, black tie tight to his shirt collar. I knew from my childhood that the schedule of mourning was important to his generation. He took a pale blue envelope from his pocket and handed it to me.

E. Malloy. Business-like. I could imagine Jimmy sitting alone, putting his affairs in order. We should all have done it by now, but jockeys, who have less chance than many of living out their full years, are no more disciplined than the rest.

Mister Sherrick watched me. I didn’t know the protocol for this. Maybe there wasn’t one. ‘Should I open it now?’

He shrugged, open-armed and said. ‘I read mine at the house.’

How many letters had Jimmy written? I opened it. One sheet of paper, neat, symmetrical writing in blue pen.

---

Dear Eddie,

I’d been meaning to talk to you for a while. If you’re reading this, then I probably never got round to it. Don’t think too badly of me. I was just trying to come with a late run. I doubt I’d ever have got up, and the stewards would have taken it away from me anyway.

Life is short. Health is precious. Spend no time trying to make your mark, because we will all be forgotten.

Best

Jimmy

---

Folding it I said, ‘Sad. I wish I’d known he’d been struggling so badly.’ I told Mister Sherrick about the job offer from Bayley Watt and how I felt Jimmy would have been better suited to it. He nodded. ‘Did he mention suicide in the letter?

‘No. He didn’t.’ I felt obliged to hold the page out to him. He palmed it away with a raised hand. ‘No. No. Thank you. I don’t doubt your word. There was nothing in mine either. If only he’d given me some clue.’ He bowed his head.

‘You’re not responsible for what Jimmy did, Mister Sherrick.’

He said, ‘I’d thought at first it was a cry for help gone wrong. He knew you were coming to see him and I believe his body was still warm when you found him and, well I just kind of thought he’d tried to time things so you’d get there to save him. But the police told me he took cyanide too.’

‘Cyanide?’

He nodded sadly. ‘He was quite thorough, Jimmy. Attended to detail. He was the same when he was a boy.’

‘Jeez, where would he get cyanide?’

He shrugged again and looked toward